


What to Believe

by actizera (kitestringer)



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-05-12
Updated: 2004-05-12
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:10:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7542769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitestringer/pseuds/actizera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beecher deals with what he does and doesn't know about Keller.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What to Believe

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LiveJournal on May 12, 2004, for Secret Identities Challenge #1: Someone tells a lie, and someone tells the truth.

**Reasonable Doubt**  
  
Toby has known for a long time how brilliant a liar Chris can be. He has, after all, painfully intimate knowledge of his skill in that area. In fact, it took months before he was convinced that Chris was capable of telling anything _but_ a lie.  
  
Even now, his certainty of Chris’s honesty usually falls somewhere short of 100%. _Maybe the lies are smaller,_ a voice in the back of his mind tells him. _Maybe they aren’t meant to_ hurt _you._  
  
_But... chances are, they haven’t gone anywhere._  
  
There are things he wants to ask him and probably never will, because, no matter how Chris might answer, it would probably sound like a lie to him. “How many men have you done _this_ to,” he almost asks one night. Chris has been fucking him with his fingers for so long that Toby can’t even guess how many he’s _using_ anymore. He feels stretched and raw, like Chris has reached inside him and exposed nerve endings Toby never even knew he had. His pelvis spasms gorgeously whenever Chris twists his fingers a certain way, and he seems to know exactly how often he should take advantage of that—when to back down, to make him wait, when to balance the pleasure with a sharp bite to his hip or a rough twist to his nipple. Toby doubts anyone would get this good at something without a lot of practice—or maybe, in Chris’s case, without a  _purpose._  
  
He can’t believe how much the idea bothers him, the thought of Chris doing this with other men. And yet...no, no, it’s not even a matter of the act itself. That isn’t the thing that turns his stomach inside out when he thinks about it. It’s the thought of Chris _being like this_ with other men.  
  
“God, Toby...” Chris runs his lips along the underside of Toby’s cock, licking, sucking, like he could do this all night and never get enough. “So fucking hot...”  
  
_No,_ Toby thinks, as he reaches down to touch Chris’s hair. _I wouldn’t live through finding out this is just another sort of con._ But the more time he spends locked away with him, the more he suspects that what he doesn’t know about Chris will always vastly outweigh what little he  _does._  
  
The question then becomes “How much does he really _want_ to know?”  
  
  
**Exhibit A**  
  
Toby throws his cards down after losing for the sixth time. “Okay, how are you doing this?”  
  
“Doing what? Beating your ass?” Chris looks up briefly as he gathers the cards to shuffle and flashes a radiant smile. “Just lucky, I guess.”  
  
“Bullshit. How dumb do you think I am?”  
  
“You calling me a liar, there, Beecher?”  
  
“Fuck yes.”  
  
Chris stops shuffling and looks up at him again with a tiny, indecipherable smile. Toby watches his eyes and recognizes something, something he can’t quite put a finger on. The silence stretches between them for a long time, too long.  
  
“You really want the truth, Toby?” Chris finally murmurs.  
  
“Yeah, actually, I do.”  
  
Chris leans far forward and his eyes drop, looking somewhere over his left shoulder. “You and me ain’t never played an honest game of cards. Not once.”  
  
“What?” Toby snorts. “What the fuck do you mean?”  
  
“Just what I said. It’s true.” Chris shrugs and leans back in his bunk. “You’ve been haaaad.” He drags out the word in a lazy, self-satisfied drawl.  
  
“Yeah?” Toby’s jaw tightens. “Well. I guess it wouldn’t be the first time, right?” Standing abruptly, nearly overturning his chair, he snatches the cards away and stalks across the room, then back again. How could he be so goddamn blind? After everything that’s happened? His cheeks burn as he looks back at Chris, who’s scratching the back of his head and still won’t quite meet his eyes.  
  
“Just relax, Toby. You want me to teach you how?”  
  
“How to cheat at cards? Thanks, I think I’ll _pass._ ”  
  
“It’s the best way to protect yourself. Take it from me: a mark who knows what to look for ain’t no good at all.”  
  
“A mark.” Toby wants to put a fist through something—maybe Chris’s mild, too-earnest face, offering to help him be less of a pathetic _mark._  
  
“Take a look at the cards.”  
  
Toby stares poisonously at Chris for a few more beats before glancing at the top card in the deck. “What. I don’t see anything.”  
  
“Look closer. Move it around in the light.”  
  
Toby squints closely, changing the card’s angle this way and that. He can just barely make out a tiny scratch, about halfway down its length. The next card has a scratch as well—this one vertical rather than horizontal, and in a different place. He snorts and shakes his head. Once he knows what he’s looking for, they seem so obvious. “Marked cards. Very original.”  
  
Chris shrugs and breaks into a low chuckle. “Why mess with what works?”  
  
“But... Chris, we never even play for money. I mean, why _bother?_ ”  
  
“Old habits die hard, I guess. I ain’t used to leaving cards up to chance.”  
  
“Well, you ought to try it sometime. It’s actually kind of _fun_ that way.”  
  
“Hey, it’s fun my way, too.” Chris’s smile is so bright it almost hurts to look at it. Toby turns away, wishing he could resurrect the full force of his anger.  
  
“All this time,” he mutters. “I can’t believe I never knew anything about it, all this time.”  
  
“You just saw what you wanted to see, Toby. People always do. Guys like me count on it.”  
  
  
**Exhibit B**  
  
He tells Chris a dumb, self-deprecating story about some guy trying to pick him up at a bar in college. He asks him how he got that tiny scar just beneath his right ear. He kneels on the floor in front of him, takes his cock in his mouth for the first time. He watches him sit with a newspaper in the corner of the room, panicked eyes scanning the same story over and over again, hour after hour. And after each of these things, without warning, it happens—a change comes over the room, a fundamental shift in energy, and every move Toby makes, anything he says, somehow becomes something Chris _retaliates_ against. Toby never finds a pattern in what causes it—but he learns quickly that all he can do when these moods strike, if he doesn’t want a fight, is climb into his bunk and wait for the storm to pass.  
  
_That newspaper._  
  
Whatever’s in it, Chris is willing to risk a trip to the Hole before he’ll let Toby get anywhere near the thing. Toby asks (politely) what could possibly so goddamn fascinating about it, and Chris clenches the pages in newsprint-blackened hands and spits venom back at him. He has a true gift for the devastatingly incisive insult at times like this; it hits like a blow to the solar plexus, and Toby knows they’ve reached that tipping point once again. So now he can lose it, give in, attack, end up hurt or in the Hole...or he can be the better man, turn around and walk away, wait for the inevitable apology.  
  
Of course, part of him wants to get that newspaper away from Chris at all costs. There it is, right there in black and white: something he could learn about him, concrete knowledge in the form of words on paper, something he could _understand._ He hovers just out of arm’s reach, fists clenched, trying to decide. Chris rises to his feet, shifting his weight like he’s gathering the strength to bolt, or maybe to throw a punch. It only makes Toby feel more defiant.  
  
Then the buzzer sounds for evening count, and Toby is suddenly distracted by the realization of how much time must have passed. _Jesus, how long_ has _he been reading that thing?_ His frustration leaches away as he stares back at Chris and sees that his face has gone ashen, almost ghostly. Toby’s left with nothing but soul-deep fatigue and resignation. “Fine, Keller. Fuck you.”  
  
When Mineo reaches their pod during count, Chris bitches at him until he unlocks the door and takes the newspaper away.  
  
  
**Verdict**  
  
During the night is when Chris always makes his amends, when he’s able to explain himself most eloquently. He pulls Toby into his arms and touches him everywhere he can reach, kisses him in all the places he’s fragile—the soft, paper-thin skin at his temples, his wrists, his ankles, the wound in his side, his once-shattered arms and legs. Toby’s helpless against him when he’s like this.  
  
By the time Chris starts whispering against his skin, “I’ll never hurt you, never again, never,” Toby’s too far out of his mind to take it as anything other than the God’s honest truth.  
  
The things Chris has done to piss him off that day don’t so much fade from memory as take on a different shade of meaning. They’re no longer the weird, semipsychotic actions of a sadistic criminal he’ll never be able to fully trust; instead, they seem like those of someone desperate, someone who needs his unconditional love and understanding, results of a life ruined by violence and abuse.  
  
_What difference does it make,_ that voice tells him, when he’s just about to fall asleep. _A card game? A stupid newspaper, for Christ’s sake?_  
  
_He would do_ anything _for you._  
  
By morning, Toby has killed Cathy Rockwell all over again, listened to his wife’s sobs in the last few moments of her life, and kissed each of his children, explaining again that he won’t be coming home for a long, long time—but what he clings to is Chris’s whispered words and the way his hands feel when they touch him. There are things he’s better off not examining too closely or questioning with his lawyer’s mind. It’s like exercising a muscle he’s never used before, looking at the world this way—absorbing only certain, necessary facts and filtering out the rest, whatever doesn’t seem relevant to his current situation. He’s getting better and better at it.  
  
Chris stirs in his bed, and Toby feels his approach, his warmth as he presses up behind him, kisses his neck and makes him go boneless in his arms. The reflection in the pod wall is all Toby needs to see, and he takes it in for a few seconds before turning around and showing Chris, again, where he’s decided to place his trust.


End file.
